Planting Flowers
Posted on Wednesday, June 25, 2014 · Leave a Comment
I love flowers, all kinds of flowers. I probably spend more than I should on seeds, annual flowers in 6-packs, 4-inch pots of trademarked annuals at $5 a pop, perennials, and flowering trees and shrubs. I can get a “runner’s high” just by installing flowers in a new garden space. When I went outside on June 17 with a notebook and a camera, I had 57 species of flowers in bloom, and many more on the way.
I’d guess I planted my first flowers when I was five. Probably some sunflower or morning glory seeds at my Grampy’s home in Spencer, Massachusetts. I spent part of every summer with him from the time I was six until he died on my twenty-first birthday in April of 1967.
But having nice flower beds is more than just buying flowers. Soil preparation and planting make the difference between “bodacious” and “barely bumbling by”. My grandfather was an organic gardener long before it was fashionable, and he taught me how to grow things well by example. He made compost and used it to nourish his soil – and his plants.
Soil can almost always be improved by adding compost. I buy it by the truck load because even the most dedicated gardener rarely has enough. Unless you quit your day job to work on your compost pile, you’ll need to buy compost. It’s rare that you can make enough from left over kitchen scraps and garden waste. For small projects, bagged compost is fine, but most garden centers and many dairy farmers sell it by the pick-up truck load at a reasonable cost.
When preparing a new bed I weed it, and then add 2 to 6 inches of compost on top and mix it in everywhere. This also loosens the soil, getting it ready for plants that have fine root hairs that do the work of penetrating the soil to get moisture and minerals. Soil needs to be loosed to a depth of at least 8 inches, so a garden fork is a good tool to use.
Even if the soil is already dark and rich, I still add a shovel of compost to the planting hole. Perennials get some organic fertilizer, too – half a cup or so in an 18-inch diameter planting hole. Many annuals like lean soil (with little nitrogen, a key ingredient of fertilizers) – so I don’t generally give them any fertilizer. And I don’t fertilize trees and shrubs at planting time – I don’t want them to put on much new growth their first year. And Mother Nature grows tree just fine without fertilizer, you know.
I like organic fertilizers because they provide lots of different minerals that are not present in chemical fertilizers, and they release their nutrients slowly. Pro-Gro is a good one made in Vermont, and Garden-Tone is another nice one. Be careful not to add too much chemical fertilizer if you go that route – it can burn root hairs.
Loosening roots of a perennial
If you’re planting something that has roots that are tangled up or circling the root ball, you will need to loosen them – either with your fingers, or with a hand tool. I like the CobraHead weeder (www.CobraHead.com) for it – it’s my steel finger. At this time of year annuals that come in 6-packs are notorious for roots that are all tangled up. I don’t worry about breaking a few roots in the process of teasing them apart – that will just stimulate them to grow. If you just plop a plant with tangled roots into the soil, the plant might never figure out how to get its roots out into the soil.
Be sure to read the planting guide on the tag from the nursery. Full sun is 6 hours of sun or more each day. Part shade means morning sun, but not hot afternoon sun, or sun filtered through a light canopy of leaves. You can grow full sun flowers in part sun, but they will not flower as much.
Grampy was frugal. He loved his garden, but he didn’t go to garden centers to buy plants – but of course, there really weren’t many back in the fifties and sixties. He started much from seed, and he divided and shared perennials with others, and I imagine he got plants from friends, too.
But if you get flowers from friends, be sure you are not getting the roots of noxious weeds with your gift plant. Study the roots carefully, and pull out anything that is not attached to your new perennial. If your friend’s garden has goutweed, don’t accept any plants, especially iris (which seems prone to bringing goutweed roots tangled in its own). Color is a good way to identify weed roots – they are often different than roots of a perennial flower.
My older sister, Ruth Anne, quoted Grampy as saying, “When you move a plant, dig it up enough soil with it so that it will remember where it came from.” That’s good advice. Soil differs from location to location, and the microbes that favor a perennial at my house might not be present at yours – unless you introduce them.
Lastly, water! New plants need soil that is lightly moist. Check your plants daily, and create a moat of soil around the plants to catch your water, especially on hillsides. Be good to your flowers, and they will reward you handsomely.
Henry is a gardening consultant, coach and the author of 4 gardening books. His web site is www.Gardening-guy.com.
Gardening with a Chain Saw
Posted on Wednesday, June 18, 2014 · Leave a Comment
Bill Waste of Lyme, NH likes to say he gardens with a chain saw. Bill is a good humored fellow, and likes to joke. But I’ve seen him use the chain saw to get a growing bed ready to plant, so his claim is, at least partially, legitimate. What Bill was doing in the vegetable garden with his chain saw was preparing straw bales for planting.
Bill lives on a hill high above the Connecticut River in Lyme, NH with a great view, but limited space for gardening. He is surrounded by trees and the property has rocky soil that would daunt even a hard-working pilgrim. This was sheep farming country for good reason – growing vegetables is hard work in rocky soil. But each year Bill grows tomatoes, basil, pumpkins and squash. This year and last he planted his squash and pumpkins in hay bales.
Bill Waste with chain saw
If you lack good soil, or have invasive weeds that terrorize your garden plot, you might want to think about growing some vegetables in hay bales, too. It’s easy, and you don’t really have to have a chain saw. Bill explained to me that he places three hay bales side-by-side to let them season – 5 weeks is a minimum, he said. He sprinkles about a cup of organic blood meal on the top of each bale to provide nitrogen to the hay, and waters it in well – encouraging the blood meal to penetrate the hay. The hay then begins to ferment, and the blood meal provides nitrogen for the microbes that are beginning to break down the hay.
This first step of seasoning the hay is important, Bill told me, because it gives off considerable heat. Enough heat so that seeds or plants might be killed after planting. As any farmer can tell you, moist hay can occasionally generate enough heat to start a fire by spontaneous combustion. In tests I conducted some years ago, a compost pile can attain temperatures of 130 to 165 degrees Fahrenheit, and grass seed will not germinate after a few days at those temperatures.
Root knife
But back to the chain saw. After 5 weeks or more outdoors, the hay bales are ready to plant. Bill uses the chain saw to carve out a planting cavity that he fills with soil. The cavity is roughly 6 by 12 inches, and 6 inches deep. I asked if I could prepare one planting hole with a knife, and he let me. I used a 6-inch long serrated knife that I got from Lee Valley tools called a root knife. It was a little slower than Bill’s chain saw, but it did the job. You could do it with a steak knife, I suppose.
After carving out the cavity, Bill fills it with potting soil and a little organic fertilizer. He plants 5 pumpkin or squash seeds in the potting soil, waters well, and steps back, ready for Mother Nature to take over. There are no weed seeds in the potting mix, and the only work that Bill needs to do is make sure the bale does not dry out. If all 5 seeds germinate, he thins out 2 plants.
Bed ready for planting
Although one could grow almost anything in a hay bale, Bill recommends vines, since they can spill over the sides and stretch out across the garden. The only down side I can see is that you must be willing to let the vines grow over the lawn- which cannot easily be cut while the plants are growing. One could, I suppose, put down black plastic or mulch to keep down grass and weeds as the vines grow.
Bill is always looking for ways to save energy – his, that is. He has come up with a method of growing tomatoes that allows him to go away for a week if he wants, without letting his tomatoes suffer from lack of water. It requires access to lots of plastic buckets, which he has. Some fast food places give them away, and some building contractors have excess buckets that sheet rock “mud” comes in.
Bucket watering system
What Bill does is bury 5-gallon pails in his garden, leaving just a couple of inches above ground. These are his water reservoirs, and his tools for getting moisture down deep in the ground. Instead of surface watering every day in August when his garden is dry and thirsty, he just waters once a week by filling the buckets. The trick? He has drilled a series of eighth-inch holes in the buckets so that water leaks out to the soil after he fills them.
Around each bucket Bill plants 3 tomato plants, each just as close to the bucket as he can. The buckets have three sets of 6 or 7 small holes, each in an inverted “Y” pattern. The water leaks out in an hour or so, but it gets water where he wants it: down deep.
Each of us has a different approach to weeding, watering, planting. We figure out what works best. I doubt I will ever bury buckets for watering my garden, but if you have dry, sandy soil, you might want to. And hay bales? I’ll probably try it.
Henry’s Web site is www.Gardening-Guy.com. He can be reached at henry.homyer@comcast.net. He is the author of 5 books.
Spring Lawn Care
Posted on Wednesday, June 11, 2014 · Leave a Comment
Clover in lawn
I love lawns. Not big lawns, and they don’t need to be pure Kentucky bluegrass, either. I love a little bit of mowed green that has some grass and clover; it can have a few dandelions or bluets or violets, too. I can live with Creeping Charlie (also called ground ivy or by its scientific name, Glechoma hederacea). Overall my philosophy is this: if it’s green and you can mow it, it’s a lawn. Only thistles and other sharp things need to be dug out- but never nuked with chemicals.
Despite that philosophy, people often remark on how lush and thick my lawn is, and how nice it feels underfoot. Having a nice lawn is easy if you follow a few simple rules.
First, stop worrying about it. And certainly never add any chemicals to it. Weed-‘n’-feed formulas kill off not only the broad-leafed plants like dandelions, they also diminish the biological activity in the soil. I want a healthy soil full of microbes (including bacteria and fungi) and know that many microbes are killed or adversely affected by chemicals.
Chemical fertilizers are made of salts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. These have the ability to dry out and kill microbes. And of course if your product includes chemicals for killing moss, weeds, fungi or insects, all those chemicals add to the killing power. Your soil cringes when you load up the spreader with weed-‘n’-feed.
Clover and Dandelions are not all bad
If you want to have a good healthy lawn, you need good healthy soil. It needs about 6 inches of reasonably good soil that drains well (so as not to drown the lawn grasses) but is not so sandy that it dries out in an afternoon. Cut and peel back a one-foot square piece of sod after a rainstorm, and look at the soil. Grab a handful of soil. Does it form a cylinder in your hand when you squeeze it, and hold its shape when you open your fingers? If so, you have clay, or a clay-based soil.
If you perform the squeeze test on sandy soil, it will crumble apart when you open your fingers. When you rub the soil between your fingers, you will feel sharp grains of sand. But if you have a nice loam, the soil with be dark and the cylinder will fall apart if you touch it with a finger.
If you are not happy with your lawn, I suggest getting your soil tested. The Extension Service in most states will have on-line instructions on how to take a soil sample, and where to send it. Some garden centers have kits for sale. Find out what kind of soil you have, what it needs, and if your soil pH is in the right zone.
Soil pH is a measure of how acidic or alkaline your soil is. Lawns do best when the soil pH is near neutral (which is 7.0) or slightly acidic. Our rain is acidic, and neglected soils – including most lawns – have soil that is pretty acidic. You can fix this easily by adding limestone to the lawn, and a pH test will tell you how much to add to balance it out. If your soil is too far from neutral, some soil minerals will become unavailable to the grass plants, even if the minerals are there. You can add limestone at any time, though most lawn experts recommend the fall so that it will have time to do its work before spring growth begins.
The other additive that helps an anemic lawn is compost or organic matter. Good crumbly compost can be flung around the lawn with a shovel and then raked out to provide even coverage. Doing that now would help. Earthworms in a healthy lawn will be more than willing to eat that compost and then excrete the nutritious ingredients into the soil.
Earthworms, fungi and bacteria will also help you improve your lawn by breaking down your grass clippings. Those clippings will add organic matter and enrich your soil. So cut your lawn regularly – avoiding a thick layer of clippings that needs to be bagged or raked.
Lawn height is critical for a good, easy-care lawn. Get out of the golf course mindset. This is a lawn, not a putting green! I set my mower, generally, one notch down from the highest setting. Right by the front door I keep it a little shorter at times.
Why keep your lawn long? Your lawn is made of millions of plants, and each one can only create a healthy root system if you let it have enough blade to create its own food by photosynthesis. Too short? The roots will be stunted, and the lawn will not be healthy. And the taller the grass, the more it can shade out annual weeds and crabgrass.
Think about it: if there were daffodils that we could mow down only to have them bloom again, we would pay big bucks for them. But call those yellow flowers dandelions, and it’s war. I hope you’ll re-think your position about lawn chemicals if you’re in the weed-‘n’-feed school. Diversity of plant types in the lawn helps to create a lush, lovely green space.
Henry Homeyer is a garden designer and the author of 4 gardening books and a children’s chapter book. His Web site is www.Gardening-Guy.com.
Vegetable Gardening
Posted on Wednesday, June 4, 2014 · Leave a Comment
I planted much of my vegetable garden early this year. Living in a cold spot, I usually wait until June 10 to plant frost and cold-sensitive plants. But lured by perfect warm weather I planted most of my tomatoes on Memorial Day weekend. The soil was 60 degrees and sun strong. Then the weather turned chilly and wet. My tomatoes will survive this, and I can always cover them if there is threat of frost. Still, after all these decades, I should have more patience. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, cukes, squash: all these like hot weather.
I did not plant my vine crops early, however. I like to start cukes, squash and pumpkins indoors in May in 4-inch pots, growing them under lights until they have vines a foot long with several leaves. Or sometimes I will buy a few nice big plants. I do this because of the dreaded striped cucumber beetle, a pest that can – and will – eat up a plant’s first 2 leaves in one night. But a bigger plant can survive a few beetle bites without trouble.
Another way to minimize beetle damage on any crop is to cover it with row cover, also called Reemay or Agribon (both are trade names). Row cover is a thin woven fabric that breathes and allows more than 90% of the sun’s light to pass through – without burning your plants the way clear plastic would. Got trouble with little green caterpillars on your broccoli? Cover it up. Rain will pass through it, too.
Although you can just lay row cover on your plants, I like to stretch it over wire hoops that are sold for the purpose. It gives the plants room to grow. In either case, you must seal the edges or some critters will crawl under for a free lunch. You can use earth staples sold for the purpose, or just use those stones that Mother Nature pushes up out of the soil every winter.
Row cover with hoops
Row cover holds in some heat, which is good at this time of year. But if you need insect pollination – all the vine crops need it – you must take off the covers when they flower or hand pollinate, which is time consuming. I sometimes leave row cover on eggplants all summer as they are wind pollinated.
Thinning plants started outdoors by seed must be the most tedious of all garden tasks. Carrots, lettuce, rutabagas, beets? All need to be thinned for best results. Beets and carrot babies are good to eat if you wait until the end of the month of June. I try to have them thinned to one inch apart by the Fourth of July, with a wider spacing a month later.
Beet greens are a classic early summer dish that I like served with a sprinkling of gourmet rice wine vinegar instead of the calorie-packing butter that I use on my asparagus. And just a reminder, don’t keep picking asparagus for more than 3 weeks. Oh, it’s tempting to keep picking the spears that pop up to replace those you’ve eaten. But the greens are needed to feed the roots, and picking for too long will cause the patch to run down.
My asparagus patch produced well this year, its third, and I am rewarding it with regular weeding, a light top-dressing of organic fertilizer and a little compost. Then I will cover the compost with a layer of wood chips to minimize the need for weeding later on this summer.
Last fall I covered up my wide raised (mounded) vegetable garden beds with hay, straw or fallen leaves after cleaning out most of the weeds. This really minimized my work this spring. I pushed off the winter cover of mulch into the walkways in early May, which kept weeds from starting up there. The sun warmed the soil, spawning some weeds. But I pulled them out or sliced them off before they got established, and then planted without rototilling.
I know some gardeners who love their rototillers as much as they love their spouses. They do create a lovely-looking bed, and they make all the weeds “disappear”. But if you chop up witch grass or perennial weeds, each piece may well produce a new plant in a few weeks.
Many weeds have what I call ‘photo-triggers’. This means that they need some light to know it is time to wake up and grow. Buried down 4 inches, the seeds can sleep for years. Turn them up with a rototiller and they germinate. So at planting time I try to minimize how much I disturb the soil. I use an ancient 4-tined potato hoe and my CobraHead weeder (www.CobraHead.com) to do most of the soil work.
We’ve all heard of the “runner’s high” – a feeling of well being from running. Sometimes I get a “gardener’s high” instead. Planting a garden will do it for me. I just wish I got the same feeling after an afternoon of weeding – instead of a tired back.
Henry Homeyer’s Web site is www.Gardening-Guy.com. He is the author of 4 gardening books, and a children’s fantasy-adventure, Wobar and the Quest for the Magic Calumet.
Spring Flowers
Posted on Wednesday, May 28, 2014 · Leave a Comment
Each year I anticipate spring with great enthusiasm not because I don’t like winter – which I do – but because almost every day there are new flowers blooming in my garden. I’m keeping a list as they bloom this year, and so far, near the end of May, I have almost 50 species and countless varieties that either have bloomed, or are blooming in my garden.
First to bloom each spring are the small bulb plants: snowdrops, winter aconite, scilla and glory of the snow. Then come the daffodils and tulips – many of which are still blooming nicely. My late tulips are still in bud.
This year I have some lovely grape hyacinths (Muscari spp.) including one called ‘Christmas Pearl” that I got from Brent and Becky’s bulbs last fall. I especially like it because each little bulb seems to send up 2 blossom stems, one large blossom and then a second smaller blossom a while later.
Spring snowflake close-up
Now I have spring snowflake (Leucojum vernum) in bloom.Or maybe it is summer snowflake (L. aestivum). They both look a bit like snowdrops on steroids. The white blossoms look down like snowdrops, but are atop 16 inch stems, and have little green decorations at the tip of each petal. This is a bulb plant that I got as a gift over 20 years ago and the clump just gets a little bigger every year. It’s supposed to be a zone 5 plant, and I have had colder winters by far, but it keeps coming back. It’s in full sun with lightly moist soil.
Trillium is technically a wildflower, but I have 4 kinds that bloom for me in shade gardens. The common one is called wake-robin or stinking Benjamin (Trillium erectum). Like all trilliums, it has 3 leaves and 3 petals. The flowers are a deep maroon. Then there is the white-flowered one (Trillium grandiflorum) which generally blooms for a longer time than the common one, and often fades to pink. I also have a double white, which is very rare, and has extra petals. Lastly I have a yellow trillium (Trillium lutea) that I bought at the New England Wild Flower Society’s garden in Framingham, MA. Its native home is in the southern Appalachians, and is less hardy than the others. I have seen painted trillium (T. undulatum) in the woods. It is a native here, but I don’t have any. If I see one for sale, I will surely buy it.
Umbrella Plant
Right now down by my stream is a favorite, a dramatic big-leafed plant, the umbrella plant (Darmera peltata). I planted it over some of the ashes I was given after my sister, Ruth Anne, died in 2009. The flowers are big clusters of small pink flowers that stand two feet above the ground. This year I have 9 stems, each topped with a cluster or cyme, 3 to 6 inches across. Later, the 2-foot wide leaves will grow big enough to serve as umbrellas for gnomes. I placed a marble bench next to these flowers – a good place to reflect on the ephemeral nature of life, while listening to the burble of the stream.
Under my wild apple trees I have what I call my primrose garden. It is dominated by candelabra primroses (Primula japonica) but has several other species as well. The “japonicas” as I call them, have 3 tiers of flowers that blossom in sequence, each a whorl of color- from magenta to pink to white. They throw seeds and spread like crazy for me. I have hundreds. They are in dappled shade and a fairly wet, rich soil.
Double white trillium
Also in that primrose garden are some with no common name, though I call them “kissing primroses” because the Latin name, Primula kisoana, sounds a little like kiss (I pronounce it Kiss-O-Anna). These are low-growing and spreading primroses that are a deep pink, and are in bloom now. They spread by root, but do not overpower nearby plants, which is nice. There is a white one, which is less vigorous. Everyone should have the kissing primrose. I got mine from Cider Hill Gardens in Windsor, VT.
Also in bloom now is bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabalis). Listed in most books as needing full sun, I recommend just morning sun or dappled shade. In full sun the foliage dies back by mid-summer, while less sun allows it to look good until fall. It likes good, rich soil and some moisture, but I also have them growing out of a sheer rock wall where there is little or no soil at all. Go figure.
There is also a pure white variety (D. spectabalis alba), and pink and white varieties of its cousin, the fringed or wild bleeding heart (D. exemia). The fringed bleeding heart is a native woodland plant, though not common in the woods. I have those in pink and white varieties. They tend to bloom off and on all summer, and will grow in dry shade.
So go enjoy the spring and keep on buying new things and trying them out. We deserve spring flowers after the winter we had!
Henry Homeyer is a gardening consultant and the author of 4 gardening books. His web site is www.Gardening-Guy.com.
Garlic Mustard
Posted on Wednesday, May 21, 2014 · Leave a Comment
As a garden writer I get a lot of email from people warning me about pending catastrophes: blights, bugs, invasive plants. Some are accurate, some are not. In 2012 we were told that a disease kills Impatiens (a lovely annual flower for shade) would make growing it impossible – ever again. But last year it did fine for many gardeners. Late blight on tomatoes is predicted every year, but my tomatoes have only been affected once. But I recently learned some disturbing news about an invasive weed, garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), that we should all pay attention to.
Invasive plants generally out-compete our native plants because they grow anywhere, often putting out leaves earlier in the spring than our natives, and holding them longer in the fall. Some, like the Norway maple, have roots that suck up water and nutrients far from the mother plant. Others, like barberry or honeysuckle, shade out natives in the understory of the forest. But garlic mustard, a seemingly innocuous little weed with a root system that is not hard to pull, goes one step beyond the others: it produces a toxin that kills necessary root-coating fungi on our maples, oaks and beeches. Where it grows, some of our favorite trees are in danger.
You may know that mycorrhizal fungi are beneficial fungi that coat the fine root hairs of many trees and perennial plants. They get sugars from the green plants and, as payback, share minerals that the green plants need but can’t extract from the minerals in their natural state. The mycorrhizal fungi produce acids that dissolve minerals in the soil and make them into a form that is readily taken up by the green plants. It’s a perfect symbiotic relationship: you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
Here’s the bad news: Garlic mustard kills mycorrhizal fungi by producing chemicals and releasing them into the soil. Maples, oaks and white ash are all trees that depend on mycorrhizal fungi to succeed. Not only that, garlic mustard inhibits the germination of seeds of many species of native plants, including many spring wildflowers. And it has no natural predators here in the United States where it has invaded from Europe. In Europe it has at least 69 insect predators. Garlic mustard produces chemicals that make it uninteresting as food to herbivores like deer, as well as to insect predators.
Garlic mustard flowers
So what can we do? First, understand its life cycle and learn to identify it. Garlic mustard is a biennial, meaning that it has a 2-year life cycle. In the first year it produces a low rosette of rounded leaves. The second year it sends up 18- to 36-inch flower spikes with pointy, heart-shaped leaves with jagged edges. The small white flowers have 4 petals and bloom in clusters about an inch or more in diameter. One plant can produce about 4,000 seeds. And although about 70% of the seeds will germinate the next year, some will remain viable in the soil for up to 10 years. A Web site full of good information is http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/plants/garlicmustard.shtml.
Garlic mustard leaves when crushed smell a bit like garlic. Not as strong, but it has a distinct odor. The Europeans that brought it here in the 1860’s often grew it as an herb or a garlic substitute, and I have tasted pesto made from the leaves. But since it produces cyanide at a level much higher than other plants, I choose not to consume it. I figure that if the deer won’t eat it, I won’t either.
Here’s the good news: pulling up garlic mustard is easy. It has a white tap root that comes right out if you give it a tug. It is not like many pest weeds – it doesn’t spread by roots that easily break off and start new plants. Goutweed, Japanese knotweed and witch grass all spread by root, but garlic mustard does not. After pulling it, place garlic mustard in the household trash, not the compost pile. Or if you must, seal it in black plastic bags and let it rot in the sun until full decomposed.
First year garlic mustard leaves
How can you help to prevent its spread? Pull it if you see it. Watch for first year plants – it sometimes arrives in hay used for erosion control – it will grow in full sun or full shade. A good close mowing of plants will help, though one report I read said that garlic mustard cut at 10 cm (roughly 4 inches) would survive 29% of the time.
Garlic mustard is blooming right now! So go look for it. Organize a neighborhood group for a “pulling party”. It behooves us all to look out for it, and to do our best to reduce its numbers and prevent its spread.
Henry Homeyer can be reached at henry.homeyer@comcast.net. He is the author of 4 gardening books and a children’s chapter book about a boy and a cougar. His website is www.Gardening-guy.com.
Tomatoes
Posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2014 · Leave a Comment
Windowsill-grown tomato
This year I met a lifelong goal of growing an edible tomato in the house, though I have I have to admit that it was quite by accident. Last fall I dug up an avocado plant that had started itself in the compost pile. Mixed in with the soil were seeds that germinated, including a tomato, a pepper and of course, weeds. I let the tomato grow and harvested a ripe tomato on May 10.
The plant has been in a west facing window and, although I did provide some supplemental lighting, that was only for a month or so. I don’t know what kind of tomato it is, but the flavor was excellent – a combination of sweet and tangy.
A few words about “volunteer” tomatoes: I get some in my garden each year, but never let them develop because many are not particularly tasty. Most modern tomatoes are hybrids (Big Boy, Jet Star, Sun Gold are all hybrids). That means that someone figured out that specific crosses of the parents would produce a tomato with desirable characteristics. But seeds from these hybrids will not breed true. Seeds saved from a Big Boy will most likely revert to one of the parents of the fruit, which may not be especially nice. So as you clean up your garden this spring, I recommend that you yank the babies.
What we call heirloom tomatoes do breed true. Tomatoes, unless manipulated for growing seed, are self pollinating. Heirlooms such as Brandywine, Purple Cherokee and Ox Heart will produce seeds that you can save each year and get just what you had the generation before. Heirlooms are not often sold at the grocery store because they are often of irregular size and shape (hard to package) and don’t have the tough skins needed for shipping and handling. But they have amazing flavors.
I grow both heirlooms and hybrids each year – a total, usually of about 30 plants. So why do I grow hybrids if heirlooms are so wonderful to eat? The modern hybrids have been bred for disease resistance, which is important. There are a variety of fungal diseases that can kill the leaves – or even the entire plant, and old fashioned breeding programs have developed tomatoes that resist them.
The worst disease for tomatoes is late blight. If it hits your garden, your tomato plants may well turn into a soggy, blackened mess of inedible fruit and dead plants in just a few days. Late blight also affects potatoes, and was the cause of the Irish potato famine. One hybrid tomato , the Defiant F-1, which was developed by the plant breeders working for Johnny’s Selected Seeds, is listed as “highly resistant” to late blight with “intermediate resistance” to early blight, another pest. I’ve grown it and like it. It has nice medium sized fruit, good flavor, and matures early.
There is much talk about GMO labeling in Vermont right now – they just passed a law that will require processed foods to indicate if there are genetically modified ingredients. As far as I know, there are no GMO tomatoes or other garden vegetables on the market. One GMO tomato was developed in 1994, but the public objected and the market for them was nil.
This year I started my tomato seeds indoors on March 24, three weeks earlier than usual. I transplanted them into bigger pots in early May and they are growing like crazy. But the plants are getting huge, which is a problem: they are too big to fit on my plant stand. I’ve had to remove a shelf so the plants can continue to grow.
Planting tomatoes sideways
If you have long, leggy plants like mine, you’ll need to plant them sideways when the time comes. I will dig a hole for the root ball and then a trench for the long stem. I’ll pinch off all the lower leaves, then cover the root ball and the stem except for the very top cluster of leaves. I‘ll bend the tip of the stem up so that the leaf cluster is above ground level. The plant will straighten itself up in a few days. The long stem will turn into roots. Alternatively, you could plant the rootball deep, burying part of the stem.
Whether you grew your tomatoes from seeds or bought plants at the garden center, it is important to harden-off the plants before they go in the garden. That means introducing them to the sun’s powerful rays and the wind’s drying effects a little each day until the plants are ready to go out in full sun. Put them near the house on the north side so that they get just a few hours of morning sun, then gradually give them more sun. Just like a fair-skinned toddler, plants can burn if they get too much sun. Greenhouses provide a lot of protection. And bring them in on cold nights.
A soil thermometer is a useful item at this time of year. Cold, wet soil is not good for most plants, and tomatoes in particular. Sixty degrees is a good minimum soil temperature to attain before planting.
I don’t plant frost-sensitive plants until well after the last frost, though a few warm days always tempt me. But lettuce, peas and other frost hardy things are going in now. I’m ready for summer!
Henry’s Web site is www.Gardening-guy.com. Contact info is there, along with previous articles and information about his gardening books.
Lessons from an Asparagus Patch
Posted on Wednesday, May 7, 2014 · Leave a Comment
On a recent cold, gray Sunday I was looking for a good project to do in my garden. I decided to clean up my asparagus bed and get rid of last summer’s dead stalks and those sneaky weeds that had avoided my lethal grip. I had planted a new asparagus patch in 2012, so this is the first year that I can harvest a few stalks – and I can’t wait. I want to give my asparagus every advantage.
First, some basic information about asparagus. It is a perennial vegetable that, well tended, can produce for 25 years or more. It often grows in the wild, especially along roadsides where it competes with grasses and weeds. But in the garden it’s a fussbudget and won’t do well unless kept well weeded. In the wild it is known to grow in marshy places, too, but domesticated asparagus prefers well drained soil – but not dry soil. And full sun is best.
Asparagus roots radiate out from the center of the plant, and can be quite near the surface. When weeding it’s important not to disturb the roots, and to recognize them and cover them up if you expose them. The roots are brown and can be the diameter of a pencil lead near the tips, to the diameter of a pencil itself near the center of the plant.
Dandelion. pointer shows where to grab it to pull out
I use a CobraHead Weeder which I like a lot. It is a single-tined weeder that works like a curved steel finger. It allows me to get at weed roots without disturbing the asparagus roots. In my bed I had a fair number of dandelions. I pushed my weeder into the soil about 4 to 6 inches, and then dragged it toward me on one side of the dandelion and then on the other side. That loosened up the soil without breaking off its deep tap root which resembles a scrawny carrot.
Next I grabbed the dandelion below the crown and applied gentle upward pressure so that I would not snap off the root. As with most perennial weeds, a morsel of the root left in the ground will grow and start over again. Most every time I got the entire root system.
Grasses, particularly witch grass, can be a real problem in the garden, and I had a little in my asparagus patch, though not a lot. Witch grass spreads by rhizomes, or roots that extend laterally. I get under the grass with my curved tool, apply some pressure from below at the same time lifting from above. Gently, so as to avoid breaking the white roots. Then, as the grass comes out, I am able to see where the roots are going, and tease them out, loosening the soil with my CobraHead and lifting. I often got roots that were 18 inches long or more. The roots have nodules where more grass leaves grow, so if you break off a root at a nodule, the plant continues to grow.
The ground was still quite wet when I was weeding my asparagus patch, so I stayed out of the bed itself as stepping in it would compress the soil and might damage roots. I brought along a kneeling pad – a simple foam pad – that kept my knees dry and protected them from sharp rocks. Some gardeners like kneepads for that function, but I’ve never found them terribly comfortable.
I plan to add 3 to 4 inches of compost over my asparagus bed, but first I want any weed seeds or broken bits of root to send up their new growth. I will remove those weeds, and then apply compost and a layer of mulch. We need some warm sun to get the weeds growing.
For mulch I use wood chips that I get from a local arborist by the truckload. They are free and easy to spread. I’ll wait until the soil has dried out and the tender asparagus shoots are poking up. I leave a little ring around the location of each plant to make life easier for my asparagus.
I know a fellow who bought a nice house with a mature asparagus patch. He loved asparagus and delighted in his free daily dose of it. But he wouldn’t stop picking, despite my warnings. For a young patch, pick for a month. For a healthy mature patch, six weeks is good. But never pick for more than 8 weeks. Asparagus needs plenty of time to re-charge its batteries, if you will. The fronds are actually leaves, and they need time to produce the food necessary for the roots to thrive. But he kept on picking long past the 8 weeks, and the next year he barely got a crop.
One last thought: if you are buying asparagus roots to plant, pick a variety that produces all male plants. The ‘Jersey’ series is all male, but the ‘Martha Washington’ roots are not – they will produce seeds, which is a waste of energy, and will produce lots of babies that will crowd your mature plants.
Henry Homeyer can be reached at henry.homeyer@comcast.net. His Web site is www.Gardening-Guy.com. He is the author of 4 gardening books and Wobar and the Quest for the Magic Calumet, a children’s fantasy adventure.
Transplanting Tomato Starts
Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2014 · Leave a Comment
This year I started my tomatoes indoors much earlier than I usually do. Normally I start them on April 10 at 10:14. Only kidding. I start them, most years, during the second week of April. That way they are well established by the time they are planted outdoors 8 weeks later – but not crowding the root space provided by a standard flat.
But this year I started most on March 24, 3 weeks earlier. Why? Because the winter was so long and harsh I was ready to see little green things growing under lights – and was willing to take on the responsibilities of nurturing them. But this year I will have to transplant my seedlings into 3-inch pots in May to avoid root crowding.
Tomato seedlings ready for bigger pots
I will pick a date for transplanting according to the Stella Natura calendar (www.stellanatura.com). This is a biodynamic planting calendar that is “supported by lunar and planetary rhythms”. For each day of the year, and every hour, the calendar designates one of 5 categories: good for working with or planting flowers, fruit, roots, leafs, or none of those – a “black-out day”. I will pick a fruit day for my transplanting .
I’ve done just a little testing of the recommendations of the Stella Natura calendar, but enough so that I feel obliged to follow it. Probably you have had times when you planted seeds and got a bad germination rate. I have. I blamed the seeds – or my planting technique. But a few years ago I tried planting a 6-pack of lettuce on a leaf day, and then again the following day, which my biodynamic calendar indicated was a blackout day. The first lettuce germinated at close to 100%, while the second at considerably less than 50% and many of the plants that grew were stunted or died. Same soil mix, same temperatures, same watering. So now I follow the calendar – at least as far as avoiding the black out days.
According to the calendar, “scientific studies showing that plant metabolism, growth rate and water absorption tend to peak around full moon. …The full moon enhances germination. Sow seeds 2 or 3 days before the full moon to receive its optimal drawing power”.
It’s important, when transplanting seedlings to bigger containers, to use a planting mix that is warmed indoors for a day or so. Potting mix coming right from the barn might be chilly enough to shock tender little roots. I use a 2 quart juice pitcher and measure out 10 quarts of commercial seed-starting or potting mix and 10 quarts of compost in a plastic recycling bin.
I stir in a cup of Pro-Gro or other organic fertilizer and a cup of Azomite or other rock powder, then moisten the mixture enough so that the dryness of the commercial potting mix, which contains peat moss or coir, is overcome. Then I let it sit for a day or more to warm up indoors.
Azomite is a rock powder mined in Utah that contains 70 naturally occurring minerals and trace elements harvested from a layer of volcanic ash that was later inundated with sea water. Although I do not have scientific proof of its ability to improve growth and vigor of plants, I have done some informal experiments with rock powders, and believe that they help.
If you use the same plot every year for decades, as I have, trace minerals of the soil may well get used up, so adding a wide variety of minerals makes sense to me. I add Azomite or finely ground granite powder to increase mineral diversity in my planting mix and also in my soil.
I re-use plastic pots each year, and believe it is a good practice to clean them before re-using. I wash them in the sink with soapy water, or sometimes fill the top shelf of the dishwasher to clean them. This helps to eliminate any bacterial residues that might not be good for my seedlings.
Also key to success with indoor seedlings is a good light source. I use ordinary fluorescent lights that I hang over my seedlings. I keep them about 6 inches above the seedlings, Light intensity diminishes exponentially with distance. My lights hang on chains, and I raise the lights as the seedlings grow. I have the lights on a timer so they are on just 14 hours a day. Little plants need rest, too.
Don’t keep your seedlings too warm. Sixty-five degrees is good for the day time, but leave a window ajar at night to let temperatures drop to 55 degrees – though I admit that don’t do that most nights.
Growing seedlings from seed requires some work, but I do it every year because I love tending my seedlings. I save money doing it, and can grow plants I would never find for sale at a garden center, too.
Henry Homeyer can be reached at P.O. Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746. Please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope if you want a question answered by mail. Henry’s e-mail address is henry.homeyer@comcast.net. His website is www.Gardening-Guy.com.
Pussy Willows
Posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2014 · Leave a Comment
In general, I don’t sing. I can’t carry a tune, and words to even the simplest of songs seem to disappear from my brain in about 20 minutes. Always have. So it was a surprise to me when, walking by a clump of pussy willows, I remembered a simple childhood tune about them and was inspired to sing it – and to ponder the joys of pussy willows. They are cheerful flowers that appear just when we need something lovely in the garden. To me they are pure fun, and not just for little children. We should all have some.
Pussy willow showing pollen
What we call pussy willows are actually the male catkins – pollen-producing parts – of two species of willows (Salix caprea and Salix discolor). Both grow wild, and are available at nurseries. Pussy willows, like all willows, like wet, swampy areas. They will grow up to be small trees, but can be kept to a manageable size with yearly pruning – and now is a good time to do so.
Fortunately for those of us who depend on pussy willow bouquets to chase away the mud season blues, the more you trim your pussy willows, the more vigorous and productive they will be. Left un-pruned, pussy willows can easily reach 20 feet tall. Since they bloom on their upper branches, picking good-looking stems can be next to impossible if the bushes are allowed to get too tall.
When harvesting pussy willows in the wild I bring along a pole pruner. Any type will work, but I like mine best: it’s an ARS brand, model 180L 1.8. Unlike other pole pruners I’ve tried, this has a handle to squeeze, just like regular pruners (not a string or handle to pull). That feature allows me to have great control. With it I can reach up and nip off pussy willows that are 12 feet or more above ground.
The pole pruner in question is made by a Japanese company, ARS, and is available from OESCO, a tool dealer in Massachusetts (www.oescoinc or 800-634-5557). Not only that, it weighs less than 2 pounds, so it is easy to maneuver with one hand. It is not designed for use on anything thicker than about three quarters of an inch in diameter. Cost? About $95 plus shipping and worth every penny. I also use it to cut the dead stems in my blackberry patch. I can reach in with it to cut ta cane, then grab it and pull it out.
In addition to bringing spring into the house, pussy willows are great for honeybees. According to beekeeper Margot Maddock of Lyme, NH, pollen from pussywillows is one of the first sources of food for honeybees in the spring. It is even earlier than that nuisance in the garden, chickweed, which is also good for the bees.
Pussy willows in a dry vase
If you put your cut stems of pussywillows in a vase and add water, they will continue to mature and produce a yellow pollen that will eventually fall on your tablecloth. But if you put them in a dry vase, they will stay frozen in time. I’ve been known to keep pussy willows looking good on my desk for months that way.
Rooting pussywillows is easy. Cut a stem about a foot long and push most of it into the soil where you would like to have pussy willow growing. But be sure that you keep track of which end is up, and leave a couple of inches sticking out of the ground. If leaves or side shoots have started to grow by the time you do this, rub them off before you push the stem into the ground. Although pussywillows grow best in moist soil, they will grow in ordinary garden soil, too. You will just need to be sure the soil does not dry out until the stem is well rooted.
Because pussy willow is so easy to root, you can easily make a living wall or windbreak. I worked on a willow farm in France a few years ago. The farmers grew willow for basket making, but also created living sculpture. Young willows – two to 3 years old – are so flexible you can braid or weave them if they are planted close enough together. You can also tie stems together to create a tunnel for kids to play in.
Living willow sculpture at SculptureFest 2012
Charlet Davenport of Woodstock, Vermont, commissioned a work of art using living willow for her Sculpturefest that is held each year in August (www.sculpturefest.org). Early spring is best time to root willows, but the artist who made the sculpture for Sculpturefest keeps willow stems in big coolers so that she always has dormant willows to root for art projects.
You don’t have to depend on nurseries and greenhouses for all your plants. If you want to pick some willow stems and plant them, they will probably grow – for free. You just need a little patience for them to reach full size.
Henry Homeyer can be reached by e-mail at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or by mail at P.O. Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746. He is a UNH master Gardener and the author of 4 gardening books. His Web site is www.Gardening-Guy.com.
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